Was GWAR the Most American Metal Band?

Were we underestimating GWAR this whole time?

It'd be easy -- really easy, in fact -- to write GWAR off as a '90s half-hit wonder, a cultural footnote. They were, after all, the band that wore arguably the most ridiculous stage outfits in modern history -- monster outfits so realistic they suprassed farce and became dead-serious livery. It was that specific kind of controlled fuckery that made Dave Brockie inimitable.

Brockie died yesterday at 50. It's safe to say that Richmond, Virginia's "adult comedy rock musical" scene, as Brockie once described his band, will never be the same again. There isn't exactly another band like GWAR. There wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to be a joke.

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GWAR started as a joke band (originally titled "Gwaaarrrgghhlllgh") that opened for Brockie's real band, Death Piggy. Wearing monster costumes and sacrificing fake animals onstage, the members of Death Piggy noticed that people started leaving right after the GWAR set and soon abandoned Death Piggy altogether in favor of their new direction as a pretend thrash metal band from Antarctica. They gave themselves ridiculous names such as Jizmak Da Gusha and Oderus Urungus. And then they had the balls to play the characters as straight as possible. Well, as straight as a stage show that sacrifices Justin Bieber (or Snooki, or members of the audience, or politicians, or just about anybody) can be.

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The monster costumes were originally intended to be used for the movie "Scumdogs Of The Universe," which ended up becoming the title of their second and best-selling album. By that time, in 1990, GWAR had become a bonafide hit amongst metalheads and armchair appreciators of high irony. MTV amplified their spectacle to the point of true stardom. Don't believe me? Here's a 1991 commercial inviting America to sacrifice their daughters to GWAR:

GWAR was always the kind of band that was in on its own joke and never gave an iota of a fuck about mainstream comprehension. They never watered it down. There were always people who didn't understand them. The city of Athens, GA, for one. They shut down a GWAR concert. The entire state of North Carolina didn't like them. Brockie was arrested for "disseminating obscentities" there, maybe the most rock and roll and American of all offenses.

But they refused to compromise.

There is something (bear with me) intrinsically American (here we go) about the way Dave Brockie (a man born in Ottawa, by the way) took a weird idea that a lot of people found ridiculous or didn't understand and ran with it to the bank, then to stardom, then back again, despite nationwide protestation. We are at our best when we're a nation of weirdos tinkering with misunderstood ideas. We are at our worst when we're a nation afraid of what others might think of us.

GWAR was different. Dave Brockie was different. Brockie and his band simply had the gumption to take it all the way.

And most importantly, they were able to laugh right along with you. You can't say that about Metallica. That was part of the act. That was, and is, perhaps, their finest performance.